The Washington Post’s Jonathan O’Connell reports that the National Park Service will not allow the Washington Redskins to build a new stadium in D.C. if it insists on keeping its current name.
The Redskins currently play in FedEx Field, which is in Prince George’s County, but D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has been lobbying to have the team return to the city itself by building a new facility where Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium currently stands. That land, however, is owned by the National Park Service.
In order to convince the team to build a new stadium at that location, Bowser would need to extend the city’s lease of the 190 acres beneath RFK beyond the 22 years it currently has left. But Interior Secretary Sally Jewell has repeatedly stated that the Park Service would not agree to extend the lease unless the team ditched the “relic of the past” that is its name.
“Personally, I think we would never consider naming a team the ‘Blackskins’ or the ‘Brownskins’ or the ‘Whiteskins.’ So, personally, I find it surprising that in this day and age, the name is not different,” she told ABC News last year.
